Religious Texts: Better Education Needed Before Interpreting Verses

November 16, 2010|Susan Campbell

I know that any time I write about Islam —- as I did on Sunday —- the accompanying commentary can get quite barbed. And I am once again reminded that many of us who embrace theology —- or none at all —- haven't done a bang-up job of educating ourselves about Islam.

And I am also reminded that we always grade ourselves on a curve.

As with Islam, Christianity contains brothers and sisters who might not look or worship like one another. Standing at the foot of the old rugged cross are fundamentalists railing against modernity, mainliners who worry whether the organ will hold up another year, and progressives who don't sweat the small stuff. I come from the fundamentalist Christian right, which affords me an interesting pew from which to view the religious landscape.

I grew up memorizing the Bible. I can point you to some scary verses, but with time and study I can also — most times — tell you the context of those verses, and I can discuss, as well, the various translations of those verses — like, say, whether a word means "virgin" or "raisin." Violence in religious texts is not new, but when I bemoaned the uncivic dialogue on Sunday, someone suggested that I open my Bible to see if I can find a particularly violent verse on the first try.

I'll take any Bible challenge, great and small, and the first page I turned to yielded Psalm: 12:3: "May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue."

Can we agree that this is not a charge from God that believers start carving the faces of infidels? It's an attention-getter, though, isn't it? From the language, we can sheath our knives, and infer, instead, that God doesn't appreciate flattery and boasting. We know that, right? We are happy to ascribe to our troublesome verses some context, but not that of the other guy. Here's another verse: Matthew: 7:3-5. That passage begins: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" I'm pretty sure Matthew's not talking about sawdust.

But I do wonder what non-Muslims would make of that verse if it was found in the Quran.

See you at Hartford Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, and then see you at Hartford Community Sing-along Thursday night. The former is entirely religious. The latter is entirely secular — but if it brings us a little bit together, cool.